So you don't understand my point?

I thought I made my point. If you would like to make another argument, go ahead.

I argue in my link that reality is necessarily not contradictory (i.e. an impossible world). And our maps certainly can and do contain contradictions, some of which I mention in the first sentence of my previous post. — 180 Proof

Contradictions are a misuse of language, or if you want to use maps, are a misuse of maps.

Some people claim that contradictions follow the rules of some language, but only when you forget the rule that language refers to things or events in reality (which includes our minds) (which like you said is necessarily not contradictory).

Can you please tell me what exactly goes through your mind when, for example, I tell you to conceive (is this even the right word/concept?) the following:

1. Square & Not square (easy)
2. A quark & Not quark (hard) — Agent Smith

To me both are impossible. In trying to imagine a square & no square I picture a square and then picture a circle, but they both cannot appear in the same instance and in the same mental space unless they overlap, but then aren't the same object. The same for quark/not quark.

Why is it a different matter? If the neural impulses are not information until interpreted, why isn't it the same for DNA?

And where is the interpreting subject in each of these cases? Interpretation is something carried out by minds. Instructions, information and interpretation are metaphors when we are talking about DNA. The genetic process is carried out mindlessly. — Daemon

Yes, genetic processes are carried out mindlessly, but information is mind-independent. Information exists everywhere causes leave effects. Take tree rings in a tree stump. The tree rings develop over time as a result of how the tree grows throughout the year. When an observer comes along and cuts down the tree and observes the tree rings and investigates other trees and forms a theory about what the tree rings are they discover that they are a result of how the tree grows and that each ring signifies a year in the tree's age. The observer did not make up the information. It is there in how the tree grows, and is there independent of any mind. Minds only come along after the fact and either correctly or incorrectly interpret the information that is already there.

This works for objects of perception, for real objects in the world which affect our sensibility. We know this from the fact we sometimes are affected by objects but don’t know what that object is. So....we are aware of an actual sensation but also conscious that what we are aware of, could be anything, so has a level of potentiality. — Mww

To vague to be useful. Give an example of being affected by an object but don't know what that object is.

I can think of blind-sight patients but the sensation they are aware of is their own reaction to something that they are neither aware of nor conscious of. They are never aware of the object, only their reaction to it, which goes back to my description of causation - that they conclude by the process of thinking that their reaction indicates that something is there, but they don't know what it could be, which is different than something appearing in consciousness in which you have no prior experience of, which comes back to the type of thinking that is interpreting sensations that are in consciousness. You can only think in sensory forms, so if there is no form in consciousness (as in blind-sight patients) then there is nothing to think about. The only form (sensation) that appears is their own reaction to something that isn't there. Tree rings are the effect. How the tree grows throughout the year and how many years it has being growing is the cause. Information is the relationship between the two.

Can someone please contradict himself/herself and tell us what's going on inside his/her head? — Agent Smith

No one can as it would require one to hold something in the mind while at the same time not holding it in the mind. Contradictions are essentially a misuse of language.

That which sees can't itself be seen. Ergo, that which sees doesn't exist. — Agent Smith

Then there is no such thing as seeing? Let's forget about minds for a minute. Colors and shapes exist, right?

Minds exist. Minds are not perceivable and thus, as far as Berkeley is concerned, cannot be conceived of (for our imaginations can work only on what our sensations provide). But they exist and Berkeley affirms their existence. We know of them by reason, not sense. — Bartricks

How do you know when you are reasoning and when you are not if not by sensation? What form does your reasoning take as opposed to being irrational if not some sensation?

Different things. You can be aware of conscious experiences. This awareness is not a conscious experience. Awareness is conscious, but consciousness is conscious being. You can be aware of a conscious being without the awareness being a conscious being.
So I can be aware of red. That awareness is not an experience but an observation of. The observation of red has no color. The consciousness of red is red. — EugeneW

Thanks for moving the conversation past what is intellectually capable of.

Red only exists in your head. Color does not exist in the world. So by being aware of red, are you not being aware of the contents of consciousness? How does being aware of red allow you to be aware of apples that are not red, but ripe? Causation - the relationship between causes and their effects is information.

So you are aware (informed) of the ripeness of the apple by being conscious of a red apple. You can be aware (informed) of other people's thoughts by being conscious of their behaviors (which includes making verbal utterances and drawing scribbles).

And it is a dialectic non-starter to fail to grasp that talking about a thing is the only way to objectively represent it. Of course I talk about thinking in terms of nouns. How else would I?

As for the rest....(Sigh) — Mww

Sigh. Thoughts are nouns. Thinking is a verb. I fail to see how scribbles that are experienced just like everything else are objective representations of things that are experienced.

If I can't understand your position because you are being inconsistent and intellectually lazy then your objective representations probably aren't objective at all but a result of the bubble you've chose to live in.

Being conscious of thoughts is not the same as being aware of objects, hence being aware of thoughts says nothing more than being conscious of them. — Mww

You seem to be confusing imagining with thinking. Imagining is a type of thinking. Interpreting sensory data is also a type of thinking which is the type I was referring to when making my point.

I is strange that you talk of thoughts and awareness as if they are objects (nouns). Are you aware that you are aware of objects? You must be aware of the thing you are talking about (awareness or objects) or else what would you be talking about?

If you know that objects are made of atoms but you never observe atoms are you aware of atoms? What about being aware of another person's thoughts by means of their behaviors? If we can be aware of objects by how light reflects off them and how they vibrate air molecules that we hear, then why not atoms and thoughts?

Then you're a naive realist?
— Harry Hindu

No. — Philosophim

But you described a world as it appears in consciousness - as if the world is as it appears for you - that the objects you perceive have all the properties that you perceive them to have (like being physical).

What does it mean to be physical?
— Harry Hindu

To be made up of matter and energy. And I will return the question. What does it mean to be non-physical? What evidence do you have of it existing? — Philosophim

I don't use those terms, "physical" and "non-physical" because they don't make any sense. What we currently understand to be "matter" is the states or processes of "matter" on ever smaller scales. You can never point to a particle when particles are described as being the relationship or interaction of smaller particles ad infinitum. It's process, or relationships, or information all the way down.

You've made a common mistake of equating the outside observation of something, to the experience of being something. Find any other person in the world. Do you know what it is like to be them? No, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Do you know what it feels like for them to hear the beating of their own heart? No, but that doesn't mean they don't have a heart, that it doesn't beat in their body, and that they can't feel what that's like.

If I open up a brain and look at it, I don't know what its like to BE that brain. You seem to think there should be a picture show going on in there, which is silly. What we imagine in our heads isn't light. Its the communication of hundreds and thousands of electrons at incredibly high speeds. — Philosophim

Why would you think that I would think that there is a picture show (of all things) going on inside a brain if you don't have a picture show going on inside of yours? How would you have come to that idea that there might be a picture show in someone's head, or that others might think the same if there wasn't something like a picture show going on in someone's head?

This is the point I've been making: That there appears to be a distinction between "being" (the term you used) and how "being" is observed. I don't know if I really find that term, "being" useful because I believe that I am being more than just my brain. I can feel my toes maybe more intimately than I can see them. After all, feeling my toes as opposed to just seeing them is what makes me identify them as my toes.

It seems to me that the "being" in your sense of it, is the same as the act of observing, as if being is the act of observing. This would also explain why you believe that others might think that a picture show is going on inside brains. If "being" has an ontological existence, then why can't we observe it in others? Maybe because naive realists believe that the properties that are perceived are the properties that really exist independently of your observation (your being). In other words, naive realists are confusing the map with the territory, or the measurement with what is measured.

How the computer works is much the same. If I open up a hard drive, do I see windows running? If I open up the ethernet wires, can I see youtube and sound being streamed over? And yet if you told a programmer that this is evidence that the computer's functionality is a non-physical process, they would laugh at you. — Philosophim

I wouldn't say that it is non-physical. I'd say that it is information. Since information is the relationship between cause and effect, the information in the ethernet wires is different than the information that displays on the screen because it requires further processing to appear on the screen. What information is relevant to your goals at any moment will be the cause of the effect that you focus your attention on. So when you see Youtube on your screen, you are more interested in the video itself and it's cause (what the video is about (when and where it was recorded and what was recorded), not how it came to appear on your computer monitor). Information exists everywhere causes leave effects. Your present goals is what determines what information is useful at any given moment. I could glean from your use of language what you are currently thinking or where you might be from and your level of education in the language you are using, depending on my goal at the moment. All that information is there as a result of those causes, but what information I deem valuable is the bits that promote or inhibit my present goal.

The problem is, sometimes people believe that if they don't understand how something fully works, they can make up things about how it works. You can't. You can't introduce things that don't exist into a system. You can't say, "I don't understand how youtube can be on my screen, yet not be in my computer when I look at it," and think your made up idea that it must be a non-physical process has any merit. — Philosophim

You're conflating two different processes (Youtube being on your screen and being in your computer). Looking at one is not looking at the other so I would never say that. What I have been saying is more like why I see Youtube in your computer as electronic boards and circuits, but the computer sees it as a picture show.

Back to the brain for a second, when we physically and chemically alter the brain, people's experience of BEING a brain changes. We've confirmed that time and again. Go get drunk, then tell me that your consciousness exists on a higher level beyond what physical alcohol can touch. Go read the evidence of anti-psychotic drugs, hallucinegens, and amazing records of brain damage like loss of long term memory, the inability to mentally see colors, comprehend words, etc, then tell me their consciousness exists on some plane beyond the physical. — Philosophim

But that is my question: why there is such a stark difference between observing brains that are drunk vs being a brain that is drunk. If I am being my brain, then why don't I experience the visual of neurons firing electrical signals at slower rates rather than feelings of dizziness and reduced inhibitions?

Putting it simply, semiosis is the construction of a meaningful relation between a self and world using a (meaningless) code. — apokrisis

I don't know if I would say it was "meaningless". It seems to me that natural selection found survival and mating benefits in the ability to construct this meaningful relation between organism and environment. The phenomenological sensory symbols that are part of the construct would be similar across multiple species as brains evolve from pre-existing brains.

Phenomenology is socially constructed. It is a modelling exercise using language to externalise the internal in a socially pragmatic fashion. — apokrisis

If language is used to externalise the internal that means the internal is prior to the externalizing of it. Therefore it can't be socially constructed. The internal constructs the external. It doesn't even make sense to talk about it in terms of "internal" vs. "external". Where and when does the external become what is internally constructed? It seems that this type of language-use creates a problem of identity.

It seems to me that the externals are just other internals so internals are prior to externals and externals only come about by internally recognizing that you are one internal among many.

Object permanence comes about in toddlers not by any social design because you have to first be internally aware that other objects exist independently of you and don't share the contents of your own internal states to then go on to understand that language is used to communicate your internal states to others.

So the code can act as a code because it stands outside both sides of the equation. It is neither material, nor informational - as much as that is actually possible. — apokrisis

Then how does the code exist if not materially or informationally? In saying that there are states of being either material or information that the code is not, you are implying that there are other states of being that are not material or information that the code is. This appears to be just more word salad. It seems to me that "code" is synonymous with "information". Interpreting the code/information is determining the actual cause of the symbol to exist.

Information/meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. Information exists wherever causes leave effects. The mind is the effect of prior causes (evolution (evolutionary psychology), life experiences stored in long-term memory and the type of senses (measuring devices) one possesses).

Neurons are like genes in being essentially costless in terms of their physics. Humans can afford trillions of synaptic switches. And they are like genes in that each switch is essentially meaningless. The connections have no meaning until the pattern that is a functional regulatory model has been evolved, developed, learnt, habituated, remembered. — apokrisis

Genes and neurons and their states are not meaningless in that they are effects of prior causes. Genes and neurons evolved from prior states with natural selection promoting those states that allows persistence of those states through time and space. The things that seem to be able to exist for extended periods are those things with a cohesive resistance to external changes. It seems to me that the "randomness", which you seem to mean when you say, "meaningless" is just a state that evolved in response to the "randomness" of the external world. Adaptability (having multiple switches providing multiple responses to external stimuli) is meaningful in a changing world.

I reserve awareness in reference to sensibility, but consciousness in reference to understanding. To be aware is to sense; to be conscious is to think. — Mww

What purpose is being aware if not to think (to process the sensory information for some purpose)? It seems that both awareness and thinking are integral parts of consciousness.

For example, a parent has two children and the parent has a favorite. She is not a bad mother because she has a favorite she loves both her children equally but she has a deeper connection with the youngest. The daughter and the mother have more in common and this has allowed the daughter to become the mom's favorite. But if the mother began to love the youngest daughter more this would be a problem. It does seem that God would have favorites not because God is a bad deity, but some humans seem more likable than others. — stressyandmessy

But unlike the mother, God has complete control over the qualities that define and are part of each of its "children" that it creates. God has favorite qualities that define a person and then goes about purposefully making people that possess these qualities to some degree or another. Why would God do that if he loves us all? Why would God purposefully create beings that lack those qualities that he favors?

But God showing favoritism does seem to be a problem. — stressyandmessy

Especially when those God favors happen to be the creators of the religion the God is a part of. Odin favored the Norsemen. Osiris favored the Egyptians. Allah favors the Arabs and God favors the Jews (chosen people).

Base level consciousness is the neurosemiosis. The modelling is the attending. — apokrisis

It seems to me that neurosemiosis, or mental processes involving signs, or producing meaning, is the act of modeling itself. Signs are types of models. Symbolizing is an act of modeling. Language is modeling of our conscious lives - our phenomenology - for others to bear witness to. Our language use is laced with phenomenological terms and projections of our phenomenology onto the world as if light is colored and ice cream is good and brains are physical outside of our own model.

Then you're a naive realist?

What does it mean to be physical?

How are brains perceived if not via consciousness? How is it that when I observe your mental processes I experience a brain but when I observe my own I experience a mind? When I look at you walking I see legs moving, and when I look at me walking I see legs moving. Why is it so different when looking at other's mental processes vs our own as opposed to looking at our running process? How does a "physical" brain create the feeling of empty space and visual depth?

In saying that brain processes correlate with, instead of cause, consciousness, I am saying that brain processes are conscious processes, just from different views.

When looking at a drop of blood in a microscope, it isn't the cells that cause the drop of blood to exist. They are the drop of blood just from a different view.

I think that information, as the:
1) process of informing, is becoming (being acquisition).
2) product of informing, is being (actuality and/or potentiality).

And that in both cases it is the effect of Aristotle's Four Causes (material, formal, efficient, and final). — Galuchat

I consider Aristotle's Four Causes different facets of the same thing - information. Information is the relationship between cause and effect. Effects are also causes and causes effects of prior causes, therefore any example of Aristotle's four causes are really effects of prior causes themselves, all of which is information. Information, or relationships, or process is fundamental - not physical particles, like atoms, neurons and brains.

It is uncontroversial that it happens from physical processes. Those who dispute that are properly marginalized.

The controversial part is how. — hypericin

If you can't explain how it happens then there is a problem with the theory that says that it does happen. Until you've explained how it does happen then it's still quite possible that you have a problem of correlation and not causation.

And using the word "information" in a variety of descriptions at different levels of abstraction, without providing a unifying general definition, is equivocation. — Galuchat

Information is the relationship between cause and effect. The mind is information in that it is the relationship between body and environment.

It is what people think they mean when they say "consciousness" that is the controversial bit. What they usually mean is that somehow the world is "represented" as an "image" in some kind of Cartesian theatre. — apokrisis

But a Cartesian theater is what you are implying in talking about models that are attended.

Can't we turn our attention back on itself in attending the attention? If not how is it that you can even talk about attention if that isn't what you are attending? It's why we can know that we know and think about thinking.

The fact that consciousness arises from brain processes is utterly uncontroversial. The philosophically interesting question that remains is how can it be that such a thing can arise from brain processes... A question to which science remains largely silent. — hypericin

If it were uncontroversial then how is it you are questioning how it happens? I'm with you on the questioning it, just not with you in saying it's uncontroversial.

We can conclude very easily from the evidence that changes in brain function in humans alters the content of experience in humans. Of course it does. No one is denying that, not even the most extreme substance dualists. — bert1

I thought that is the very thing you are questioning Apo on - how a brain alters, influences or causes changes in experience - essentially why there is an experience to be had at all given the states of brains.

I've moved on from the part of the emergentist claiming that certain physical states begat experiencing states. Now I'm asking how exactly does a mass of neurons create an experience or model of the world that is not a mass of neurons? Neurons only appear in my experience when observing other people's experiences. That must mean there is a distinction between my view of my own mental processes vs. a view of other people's mental processes - of how my modeling models other people's experiences.

Do brains cause experiences - if so then you're left with the task if explaining how that happens. If it has nothing to do with causation but with views, then there is no need to explain how brains cause experiences. Brains and minds are just different views of the same thing - not much different than looking at a macro-scale object only with your eyes vs looking at it through a microscope - different views of the same thing makes it appear like we are talking about two different things.

I'm always saying "life and mind". The two are pretty synonymous given that they are both about the special thing of a semiotic modelling relation.

If you want a rough distinction, life is an organism's model of its body - its metabolic existence - and mind is an organism's model of the environment within which that body must persist. — apokrisis

This talk of models is strange considering that we understand models as a smaller scale representation of what is being modeled. Model cars are made of metal and plastic - the same as the real thing. The only difference is scale and detail.

The model that is the mind is not made up of neurons. It is made up of something totally different. I'm really looking forward to an explanation as to how neurons model visual depth and the feeling of persisting in an environment surrounded by empty space.

It seems to me that empty space that is experienced is just information or a model of other information (in light that passes through the air without being reflected just like a glass window appears transparent), just on a smaller scale and with less detail.

Doesn't the experience of bent straws in water and mirages and darkness and being surround by empty space show that we model the world using light?

So in talking about physical brains that are only observed with the presence of light you are confusing the model with what is modeled.

First-person models are composed of informational relations. A sensory information processor can only process information acquired by its own senses, not by the senses of another. The point of view that develops is a relationship between the organism and the immediate environment that the organism uniquely occupies. Even computers have first-person perspectives in that they occupy a unique area of space and time store and work with different information acquired by its inputs. So first-person perspectives are really just possessing and working with information that is unique to the organism or device that possesses it. It is why we can never know what it is like to be another because we would have to be that person to know what it is like.

Past experience is used to predict the future world in terms designed to deliver effective action. So the imagination is just this forward prediction of what it would be like to experience the known world from some other viewpoint.

So you could generate the image of a stop sign just as you could generate an image of your missing keys or the deer you hope to shoot in the woods. The ability to hold a search image in mind is a meaningful and functional action. It speaks to a state of intent that is to be physically enacted at some future time and place. The image informs that material possibility.

But such states of anticipatory imagery could be nonsensical - noise rather than information - as when you are dreaming. — apokrisis

Yet the dream appears just like the model in your description of "life and mind". How can one be a model and the other just noise when you can't tell the difference in the moment you are dreaming, and even after the fact as memories of what was dreamed are no different than the memories of "real" events?

We can imagine a past that would make the present we live in very different. People can dwell on what could have been. Dreams can cause people to change the way they live or to look at the world differently. These "imaginary" things have real impacts on peoples' behaviors.

Why they don't go forwards or backwards in time? They even fluctuate in time. — EugeneW

What does that even mean - as if time is a container in which things fluctuate? Fluctuation is a type of change. They don't fluctuate forwards and backwards in time (whatever "in time" even means). They simply change relative to each other.

Virtual particles form a clock, — EugeneW

If everything is made of virtual particles, then what use is the term, "Virutal"? The virtual only makes sense in light of the real. It doesn't make sense to say that all particles are virtual.

You obviously haven't been reading what I have wrote.

Like I said, time is an illusion. They don't go forwards or backwards in time. They simply change. — Harry Hindu

I can only speak for myself. I read and attempt to understand the philosophers whose work interests me because of what I can learn from them. Their work does not come with an expiration date. Unless you have some understanding of a philosopher you are not in a position to judge whether his work is useful. — Fooloso4

What information do others (philosophers or not) have that you don't when it comes to understanding the mind and it's relationship with the world? It seems to me that we are all stuck in the same predicament with no one having any special place in trying to explain it. I am more interested in what you have to say about your own perceptions of your own mind which includes its thought, beliefs and knowledge and the forms they take, without any influence from others.

What are you pointing at when you say that you believe, or know, such-and-such.
— Harry Hindu

That depends on what it is I say I believe or know. The statement may be about me or what I say I believe or know or both. — Fooloso4

Prove it to yourself that you believe something, and tell me how you did it.
— Harry Hindu

I don't know what you are getting at. Why would I prove to myself that the things I believe are things I believe? What role do you think proof plays here? — Fooloso4

Yes, but there must be some similarity between your various beliefs for you to identify them all as beliefs, no? What is the similarity that all your beliefs have that you point to when you say "I have a belief"? What form do beliefs take so that you can identify them as beliefs?

How do you measure time? By comparing one change (the movement of the hands of a clock) with another (the rotation of the Earth). Time is the measurement, not what is being measured. This is what naive realists do - confuse the measurement with what is being measured.

I don't think you know the meaning of "doubt", Harry. It signifies an uncertain state of mind. Therefore your assertion that a person must decide to doubt is directly contradict to the nature of "doubt", as deciding signifies a form of certainty. — Metaphysician Undercover

It just doesn't make any sense to assert that doubt is fundamental. If it were, then how could we ever store any information in our brain? How is it that we have memory? What is memory for if not to store valid and useful information that can be relied on for similar situations in the future?

Now you are misusing the word "decide". Many, in fact most, actions performed by living beings are not produced from a decision. Biologists don't really know the true impetus behind most living actions, but we can surely say that the majority of them are not derived from decisions. So your question here is derived from the false premise, that an act of an organism proceeds from a decision, when in reality most of these acts do not derive from decisions. — Metaphysician Undercover

You seemed to be berating scientism in the other thread, but here you are embracing it. All I know is that when I decide to do something I can often times take time to simulate different actions and predictions of their outcomes of those actions and then choose the one that has the best predicted outcome. It can also involve comparing what is presently observed and integrating it with a vision of how I would like things to be and applying the best action to achieve that goal. So the way I am using "decide" is such that computers can make decisions to. It's simply a matter of being able to process sensory information (input) and then producing actions (output) based on one's programming (instincts and learned behaviors).

I agree, knowing how to use language is completely different from knowing how to run. But notice that the question here concerns knowing that oneself is running, which is completely different from knowing how to run. In order for a person to know that oneself is running, I think It's quite obvious that the person must know what "running" is. Otherwise it is more likely that the person would misjudge oneself as running, because the judgement would be nothing better than a guess, when the person doesn't know what "running" signifies. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well yeah, running isn't the scribbles, "running". It is an observable action. You know you are running because 1) you decided to run and 2) you can observe yourself running. If you decided to run but you are not running, then there is something wrong with your muscles, nervous system, etc. You don't need language to know you or anyone else is running. You simply need eyes and a brain.

When you were born and while you were an infant did you doubt anything your parents, or anyone in a position of authority, told you?
— Harry Hindu

Of course. This is just more evidence that you do not understand the meaning of "doubt". — Metaphysician Undercover

It seems to me that you have a strange notion of "doubt" and "fundamental".

That's where virtual particles come in. Their name is a misnomer. They go back and forth in time all the time. Before real particles came into existence, there were only these VPs. — EugeneW

Like I said, time is an illusion. They don't go forwards or backwards in time. They simply change.

That's the problem with apokrisis' metaphysics, it gets the temporal relation of cause and effect backward. But that's just the manifestation of a deeper problem, inherent within scientism in general, a complete misunderstanding of the nature of time. When physics represents fundamental processes as reversible, it's obvious that they are employing a misrepresentation of time. This is the "denial of the obvious" I refer to above. When we deny the obvious, we can produce a very simple model of reality which appears to avoid all the hard problems, such as the causal role of the free will of the individual. But then instead of having an unbridgeable gap within the theory (dualism), there is an incompatibility between the theory and the fundamentals of experience. The theory does not correspond with basic observation. This is the manifestation of a failure to respect the difference between past and future. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, I never understood how scientists could say that processes are reversible - as if while the rest of the universe moves forward, some other processes could move backward in time. It seems to me that the whole universe would have to be moving backward, not just different processes within it. Time is the illusion. Change is fundamental. When something changes, there is no sense of forwards or backwards. Everything changes relative to everything else.

Neurons aren't any different. There is a frequency (Hz) at which neurons send, receive and process sensory data. Compared to a computer's CPU it's very slow, but the difference lies in the parallelism, where we have billions of CPUs where the computer has one with 6 or 8 cores by today's standards. Taking two computers with difference CPU speeds and running the same software will produce noticeable difference in how the computer processes input and displays output.

How brains process sensory data is dependent upon the relative speed at which it processes that data vs the speed at which what is observed changes. Instead of trying to track every change in the world, the brain creates the illusion of static, physical objects (like brains). Just as QM has theorized that the outcome of a measurement depends on the measuring device being used, so does the way the world appears is dependent on the sensory devices that are used to observe it (dark and bright, bent straws in water, mirages, etc.). In this sense, physical brains and their functions are not the cause, but the outcome. They are the measurement, not what is measured.

Phenomenology ain't the destination even if it seems the starting point. It might correctly identify the embodied and intersubjective nature of human experience. But as an academic thread of thought, it wanders away into no clear conclusion. It winds up in PoMo plurality and "disclosure of ways of being. Nothing of any great interest results. — apokrisis

It's the only point from which you know anything about the world, including brains. When you talk about brains and their functions you can't help but talk about them from your own starting point. A valid conclusion is that the world is not as it appears in the mind, but the mind is as the world is in the sense that it is not physical, but informational.

Hardly. One is an easy mistake to make - a high level act of interpretation. The other is found to be constitutive of interpretations themselves.

You can unsee the mysterious figure. But you can't unsee the Mach bands. And having noted this interesting difference in your qualitative experience, you would then look to its separate causes. — apokrisis

Can you unsee the empty space around you that isn't empty at all? Can you unsee colors that scientists claim doesn't exist outside of your head? When scientists claim that the world isn't as it appears, what does that say about how "brains" (other minds) appear?

A textbook example of Dunning-Kruger in action. The less folk know about brain function, the more they feel confident the Hard Problem is a slam dunk. — apokrisis

I know plenty about brain function, but nothing about how brain functions create the conscious feeling of say, depth perception. How do neurons create the sensation of empty space?

In all the literature I have read, none of it explains how it is that when I look at your mental functions I perceive a brain, but when I look at my mental functions, I perceive a mind. You only know of brains and their functions by it's appearance in the mind. I don't I experience the same thing when looking at everyone else's mental functions as I do when looking at mine.

Consciousness is the brain operating to allow for wakefulness and awareness. There is no "where." It's a made up idea. There is just the brain and its functions. Consciousness is itself a made-up term used to describe something people had no clue about before the past few decades. — Garrett Travers

Yet you use the term to describe what the brain emits or produces. It's not my made-up idea. It's yours that I'm trying to understand based on what you have said and the terms you are using.

Then consciousness isn't emitted by the brain, but is the brain operating in certain ways. You aren't being consistent.
— Harry Hindu

There is no distinction between the two, Harry. The brain emits, generates, or otherwise enables consciousness, just as it does sight, through its operations. Individual networks of the brain are responsible for certain functions, that when operating in tandem with others, produce the awareness that you use the term "consciousness" to describe. — Garrett Travers

The brain does not enable sight on it's own. It needs eyes to be able to do that. Eyes are not the brain, but are connected to the brain.

Light bulbs emit/produce light. Light is not part of the bulb once emitted. The bulb changes states between off and on and when on it emits light and when off it doesn't. The bulb projects light out into the world. So the terms you are using is describing the brain and consciousness like a light bulb and light. Yet you then contradict yourself and say that consciousness is the brain. If the latter, then the electrified filament inside the bulb would be more like consciousness as being (part of) the brain and not something that is produced or emitted. So which is it?

What form does the awareness that is produced by the brain take if not just the brain in a certain state? How would you know that someone is aware by looking at their brain? How do you know that you are aware? Can you know that you are aware without looking at your own brain? If so, then what form does your own awareness take as opposed to the form that other people's awareness takes from your own perspective?

As Wittgenstein uses the term 'proposition' it is not its expression. According to the Tractatus a thought with a sense is a proposition (4). It does not become a proposition when it is expressed. The belief is not the cause of a proposition. The belief or thought is the proposition, it is expressed in symbols or words or scribbles or pictures. — Fooloso4

I really couldn't care what Wittgenstein says because it isn't useful. There is too much of a dependency on what dead philosophers have said with no regard to what we know now. Some people on this forum treat Witt like he was some kind of prophet.

I never said the belief is the scribble. I said it is the cause of the scribble. What form does your belief take if not visual imagery, sounds, feelings, etc.? How do you know that you are believing or knowing anything at any moment? What are you pointing at when you say that you believe, or know, such-and-such. You don't need to prove it to me. Prove it to yourself that you believe something, and tell me how you did it.

I really don't see your logic Harry. Why do you think that when a person is doing anything, doubting for example, the person must be certain of what oneself is doing? Do I need to be certain that I am running, in order for me to be running? The person who doesn't even know the word "running" would still run, and it would be impossible for that person to know oneself to be running. Likewise, the person who doesn't know the word "doubt" would be doubting without the possibility of being certain that they are doubting. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is ridiculous, Meta. A person or animal decides to doubt, to run, or whatever. How can an organism decide to do something without knowing it's doing it?? When you raise your arm you have to decide to do it prior to it raising. Doing so may be simple and effortless now,, but it required a lot of practice when you were an infant to control your limbs - to bend them to your will. A person doesn't need to know language to know it is running. Knowing how to use a language and knowing how to run are two different things.

I can't grasp your question here. When I ask someone to justify something, then, generally I am doubting that person. What this says about my own belief is that I believe that I ought to doubt others. It doesn't mean that I am certain that I ought to doubt others. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not necessarily. You could be asking a question because you simply don't understand what they are saying. There is a lot of word salad on these forums. You can't doubt something you don't understand. In a sense you're not doubting what they said yet. You are doubting your own understanding of what they said.

When you were born and while you were an infant did you doubt anything your parents, or anyone in a position of authority, told you? Do you doubt everything everyone says, or are there some that you trust more than others, like your family and friends?

Consciousness is the brain operating to allow for wakefulness and awareness. There is no "where." It's a made up idea. There is just the brain and its functions. Consciousness is itself a made-up term used to describe something people had no clue about before the past few decades. — Garrett Travers

Then consciousness isn't emitted by the brain, but is the brain operating in certain ways. You aren't being consistent.

So neurologists are not conscious of the brains they are testing? When neurologists provide explanations of brains and how they function, are they talking about their conscious experience of brains, or how brains function independent of their conscious experience (observation, empirical evidence)?
— Harry Hindu

...? — Garrett Travers

Well? Are neurologists conscious of brains or not? If so, then what form does them being conscious of brains take? How would they know they are conscious of brains? What form does empirical evidence of brain functions take, and in talking about empirical evidence, are you talking about your conscious visual experience of brains, or how brains are independent of your visual experience of them?

One can tell if someone is unconscious if they are unresponsive. The man acting unconscious is still conscious. He wouldn’t be able to act if he was unconscious, though he may deceive us. — NOS4A2

You can yell my name and I won't respond. Deceiving you is a successful act of acting like you are unconscious.

I don’t think the fact of being conscious is silly, but the notion of “consciousness” is. By adding the suffix “ness” to the adjective “conscious” we fashion a thing out of a descriptive term, which in my mind is an error in philosophical discussions. This is true of terms such as “awareness”, “happiness”, “whiteness”. Descriptive terms serve to describe things, but they aren’t themselves things, substances, or forces, and they shouldn’t be treated as such in any careful language.

When speaking about and analyzing things that exist, the human organism exists. This human organism is what we study and analyze to better understand his activity. “Consciousness”, however, doesn’t exist, and we should abandon the term. — NOS4A2

What I am gathering from what you are saying is that conscious is a descriptive term of other's behaviors. But that isn't what I'm talking about when I use the term. I'm talking about the form my awareness of other people's behaviors takes.

So, it would have to be brains that produce consciousness, as there are no structures of consciousness that can be tested for brain production, but the opposite is tested daily, as I have demonstrated with the research I have posted. — Garrett Travers

So neurologists are not conscious of the brains they are testing? When neurologists provide explanations of brains and how they function, are they talking about their conscious experience of brains, or how brains function independent of their conscious experience (observation, empirical evidence)?

"How?" is still a mystery, but the leading theory is that all structures of the brain operate in a complex network of unparralleled sophistiction. By produce, I mean emit, generate, or otherwise enable. Much like eyesight is produced by the brain, so too is consciousness. — Garrett Travers

I don't see how complex networks of neurons can produce experiences of things that are not neurons. If brains emit consciousness, where is consciousness - once emitted, relative to the brain?